Issue: "Medicaid"

WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday will unveil a proposed budget for 2016 that partly privatizes Medicare, turns Medicaid into block grants to the states, repeals the Affordable Care Act and reaches balance in 10 years, challenging Republicans in Congress to make good on their promises to deeply cut federal spending.
The House proposal leans heavily on the policy prescriptions that Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin outlined when he was budget chairman, according to senior House Republican aides and members of Congress who were not authorized to speak in advance of the official release.
With the Senate now also in Republican hands, this year’s proposal is more politically salient than in years past, especially for Republican senators facing re-election in Democratic or swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois and New Hampshire, and for potential Republican presidential candidates.

By our count at the Galen Institute, more than 49 significant changes already have been made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: at least 30 that President Obama has made unilaterally, 17 that Congress has passed and the president has signed, and 2 by the Supreme Court.

Key Points
•Avik Roy’s Transcending Obamacare reform proposal retains a number of core features of the Affordable Care Act, even while promising to modify them at the margins.
•Despite the plan’s initial aversion to political risk, Roy places several longshot bets on proposed policy reform results.
•The plan strives too narrowly to ensure that high-deductible health insurance will be the dominant (or, perhaps, exclusive) form of exchange-based coverage and neglects or avoids a number of other reform opportunities. It is also prone to overly optimistic fiscal projections, insufficient details, and ad hoc revisions that fail to hold together.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence has won approval from the Obama administration for a Medicaid waiver that begins the transformation of the program toward a consumer-directed model.
Gov. Pence is building on the popular and successful Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) created by former Governor Mitch Daniels in 2007.
Both of them pushed the envelope with Health and Human Services officials who were determined to perpetuate a hide-bound program that is ill-serving tens of millions of recipients while gobbling up state revenues. Gov. Pence and his staff worked directly with White House officials to overcome this inertia and set down some new markers for future reform.
Gov. Pence announced today that the administration has approved Healthy Indiana 2.0 that will require contributions from all able-bodied Hoosiers participating in the program.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Healthcare costs and lack of money or low wages rank as the most important financial problems facing American families, each mentioned by 14% of U.S. adults. Fewer Americans than a year ago cite the high cost of living or unemployment, and the percentage naming oil or gas prices is down from 2012.
Gallup has been asking Americans about the most important financial problem facing their family in an open-ended format for the past 10 years. Healthcare this year has returned to the top of the list for the first time since early 2010, when the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare," was signed into law. Still, Americans viewed it as an even bigger financial problem in 2007, when a range of 16% to 19% said it was most important.

Earlier this month The Foundation for Government Accountability conducted a poll of 500 voters from the November 4th, 2014 general election in the State of Tennessee and found that when they know the facts about expansion, they do not support it in the Volunteer State.
When respondents were told that proposed Medicaid expansion is paid for with $716 billion in cuts to seniors on Medicare, nearly 80 percent of poll respondents were less likely to support Medicaid expansion.

By Avik Roy On March 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the case that many pundits claim will “blow up Obamacare.” That’s an exaggeration; whatever the High Court decides, Obamacare will remain entrenched in federal law. But if the Supremes do end up ruling against the Obama administration—a distinct possibility—they will be giving Congress a uniquely important opportunity to reshape the Affordable Care Act in far-reaching ways. Here’s how that could work.

New York Times correspondent Abby Goodnough asks if the latest legal challenges to ObamaCare are signaling a divide within the party or are Republicans still recovering from getting burned when the ACA went to the Supreme Court last time?”
About 5 million middle-income people in 36 states currently are receiving subsidies for health insurance through the federal exchanges. Since 87 percent of them are receiving subsidies to purchase coverage, many likely would no longer be able to afford coverage.
Ms. Goodenough reports that after the health overhaul law was passed in 2010, Republicans on both the state and federal level spoke with one voice flatly rejecting ObamaCare. However, in the years following ObamaCare’s passage while the majority of governor’s still remain critical of the law, nine governors have expanded their Medicaid programs and four more governors are considering Medicaid expansion this year at the urging of hospitals and business groups.

By Kimberly Leonard
Grace Brewer says she never thought she would be without health insurance at this stage of her life. "I'm a casualty of Obamacare," says Brewer, 60, a self-employed chiropractor in the Kansas City, Kansas, area.
She wanted to keep the catastrophic health insurance plan she once had, which she says fit her needs. But under the Affordable Care Act, the government's health care reform law, the plan was discontinued because it did not comply with the law's requirements, and her bills doubled to more than $400 a month. "I wanted a minimal plan and I’m not allowed to have it," she says. "That seems like an encroachment on my freedom."

By Tevi Troy
The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, has had a tough run of it since being signed into law nearly five years ago. It has faced constitutional challenges, voters ousting congressional Democrats who supported it, and the disastrous rollout of its federal website in October 2013. This past fall, supporters launched a public-relations campaign dedicated to the proposition that things were finally going well for ObamaCare’s 7 million sign-ups, but their campaign was derailed when the Obama administration admitted that it had added 400,000 dental patients to the roster of health-insurance enrollees to falsely claim it had reached the 7 million number.